


Electricity

by FabulaRasa



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 10:16:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11667093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: This is a little pre-slash -- an exploration of the aftermath of Napoleon's torture, and Illya's first beginnings at helping him with it.





	Electricity

Illya moved a thoughtful finger across the chessboard and studied the result. No good, he decided, and replaced it. He turned the board and considered it from another angle. 

_Bzzzzt_ , came the noise from the table, and “Ahhh,” Solo said, followed by a low spit of cursing. Illya ignored it. Obscenity didn’t offend him, of course, but it surprised him – it occurred to him he had not yet heard Solo swear, other than a mild and occasional “damn.”

“Everything all right?” he said.

“Perfect,” Solo replied, his syllables crisp as his collar.

“I could help.”

“Ah yes, your formidable technological expertise. No thank you.”

Illya raised an eyebrow. “Is simple job.”

“Simple. The complete rewiring of a state-of-the-art recording and video device, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand. Technology that every expert in the field will tell you does not exist, with mechanical complexities a master engineer would have difficulty describing, let alone reconfiguring. A simple job.”

Ilya tapped a pawn against his chin and studied his board. “You don’t want my help, just say so.”

 _Bzzzt_ , said the device again, and Solo jumped as once again the wires stung him. This time the string of obscenities was Italian, for variety. After a while Illya got bored and fetched his book from his room, stretching out on the sofa while Solo worked, huddled under the circle of lamplight at the table. He stole glances at Solo every now and again – the furrow of his brow, the clench and unclench of his jaw. It didn’t have to be done tonight. He had no idea why the man was so determined.

Every so often, at apparently random intervals, the thing would zap Solo again. Illya was beginning to root for the little device, which was clearly putting up a fight. Solo was just as clearly determined to wrestle it into submission. Illya concentrated on his book. He supposed he could make himself useful by getting them some food. It was late, but the trattoria down the street was still open, and he could still bring back something. Solo’s eating habits were erratic at best – meals of epicurean indulgence, and then he might forget to eat anything for days at a time. Feast or famine, nothing normal or steady. Not unlike the man himself. 

_Bzzt_ , came the noise yet again, and this time there was no wince, no grimace, no string of curses. This time the table was upended in a smooth motion that landed the precious device on the floor in a thousand pieces. The table flew across the room, crashing into an antique cabinet, and the vase on top of the cabinet toppled and fell, shattering on the parquet, shards of its delicate porcelain skittering across the floor to rest among the wires and shiny chrome. Solo was breathing hard. “Fuck,” he spat, and he had kicked his chair and wrenched open the door to the balcony before Illya registered what had happened – it was as though some unexpected explosion had occurred in the middle of their quiet evening. 

He sat there on the sofa, frowning. He looked at the device, now destroyed. Like a cold fist in his gut he heard the noise of the last hour, the steady _bzzt, bzzt, bzzt_ , and he shut his eyes.

* * *

At the quiet click of the balcony door, Napoleon steadied himself. He kept his gaze on the evening lights of the city below, his hands gripping the balustrade. Kuryakin’s step was cautious. 

“Sorry about that,” Napoleon said lightly. Or at least, that was what he planned to say. That was the thing he ought to say. But he opened his mouth to speak and found his throat still slightly strangled, so he licked his lips instead and concentrated more firmly on the view in front of him. He turned his head at the clink of ice against a glass, and looked down to see the scotch resting beside him.

“Drink,” Kuryakin said. 

He shook his head. “Drink,” Kuryakin said again. So he reached for the drink, but he hadn’t calculated how badly his hand was still shaking. The scotch sloshed onto the stone, and Napoleon set it down in haste, turning his head away, biting his lip until he could taste something other than his own shame. 

“Forgive me,” Kuryakin said, which of all the words he could ever have expected to hear out of the man’s mouth, of all the possible permutations of potential reactions, were the most surprising. 

“I—for what,” he said. His voice sounded tight and thin, and he hated it. 

“Was my fault,” Kuryakin said. “Before. Now. Both times. My fault. Not your fault.”

“That—no,” Napoleon said, because apparently when English decided to desert him, it did the thing up right. “It’s—I’m fine.”

“You need drink. Come.” Kuryakin lifted the glass, and—ah, exquisite humiliation—held it to Napoleon’s lips, tipping it gently. He swallowed, once, then again. Kuryakin set the scotch down. He was right; the settling warmth slowed the race of his heart, the quiver in his limbs. Made breathing slightly easier. 

“So when I was young,” Kuryakin said, and now he was pulling a cigarette out of the pack in his jacket, and lighting it. “When I was young, these men would come to our apartment.” He lit the cigarette, and handed it to Napoleon. He took it, and found his hand was a trifle steadier now. He sucked down the tobacco gratefully. 

“These men, they came to see my mother, of course. She was—is—very beautiful. And she was in need of their help, and she used the only thing she had to make them help her. I do not know how many did. My father died in gulag, so I think not many.”

Kuryakin took another cigarette out and lit one for himself, but he didn’t smoke it. He turned the little silver lighter over and over in his hand. “So there was this one,” he resumed. “He would wait until my mother had left, until he was alone with me. He would say, boy, come here. He would pat the bed beside him, my mother’s bed, so I had to sit beside him. Let us play game, he would say. Is not what you are thinking,” Kuryakin said, with a glance at him. 

“He would take his cigarette and press it into my arm. And the game was, how long could I stand it before I would cry out. He would say, if you can stay quiet, perhaps I bring your father home. Would you like that? Would you?”

“Christ,” Napoleon murmured.

Kuryakin shrugged. “To this day, I am not much of a smoker,” he said, and he laughed. “But sometimes, I hear that scratching sound a lighter makes, and. . . and I am ten years old, and there is fat greasy man grabbing my arm, and I am afraid.”

Napoleon tried to find something to say to that. His throat was still a bit too tight for much speech, but at least his hand had stopped shaking. Some of the shame had receded, too. It was just that he hadn’t been prepared. He hadn’t been prepared for what his body would do, when exposed to electric shock again. He had tried to push it down, keep it at bay. But every little shock, and he was back in that chair, strapped down, trying not to scream at the agony of it, every nerve in his body on fire, tasting the salt of his own tears. His body had been back there, and he hadn’t been able to stop it.

He stubbed the cigarette out and threw it overboard. A thousand things he ought to say. He ought to apologize. He ought to assure Kuryakin it wouldn’t happen again. He ought to assure himself it wouldn’t happen again. 

“It goes away,” Kuryakin said quietly. “A little at a time. Will be better soon.”

Napoleon ducked his head, wanting to go back to a place where everything he was thinking was not written on his face. He was not used to thinking of Kuryakin as being so. . . perceptive. 

And then. . . then there was a steadying hand resting on top of his, on the stone. Not grasping his, and not pressing on him, but just resting there. A still, solid presence. Napoleon shut his eyes, and accepted the warmth of that hand like he had accepted everything else. They could go back inside and be themselves again. But for now, for these few moments, they could be other people. They could be people. 

He didn’t know how long they stood there, both watching the lights glimmer and wink in the city spread below them, listening to the faint calls and laughter of late-night partiers in the distant streets. Other people with less complicated lives. Boring people. At some point he shifted his hand, and Kuryakin lifted his, but Napoleon had just been turning it so he could grasp his. They stayed like that some more, hand resting in hand, Kuryakin’s grip on him still firm. 

“Why did you say it was your fault,” he managed.

“Because is truth. I should have been there sooner.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” They fell into silence again, and then Kuryakin gave a thoughtful sigh. 

“Of course,” he said, “you did take your time pulling me from water, before.”

“What on earth are you talking about, that was one of the most daring water rescues ever attempted. I drove a truck into a lake for you.”

“You had sandwich first.”

“I. . . how could you possibly know that?”

“Your breath smelled like ham.”

“I am astonished at your ingratitude, Peril.”

Kuryakin gave a little smirk, and Napoleon let his lips twitch in return. They were still holding hands. It felt like an anchor, a tether to calm, as though the slow steadiness of Kuryakin’s heartbeat were being transmitted along it to him, like a lifeline. He ought to withdraw his hand, but Kuryakin acted as though unaware of what their hands were doing. Still, he ought to move. He shifted, and pulled at his hand, and Kuryakin’s hand let go of his, as though it had been the most natural thing in the world that they had been standing on this balcony holding hands. 

“Waverly ought to know,” he said. “You can’t be partnered with someone who suffers a mental collapse at every jolt of electricity. I’m not safe in the field right now.”

“Mm,” Kuryakin said. He was squinting at something out in the view, tilting his head at it like he had seen something interesting. “How did that go for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you had conversation with Waverly about my little problem. How did it go?”

Napoleon was silent. Kuryakin turned to look at him, the full force of that keen gaze, and Napoleon didn’t drop his eyes. “You – what is the expression? You have my back,” Kuryakin said. “I have yours.”

“That’s some fairly complicated English, for you.”

“Shut up,” Kuryakin said, and flicked his unsmoked cigarette over the edge. “Your Russian is shit.” He turned to head back inside, and his hand was on the door when Napoleon stopped him.

“Illya,” he said. He wasn’t sure what to say, which was something of a new experience. The whole thing was a new experience, really. The not working alone part, sure, but something else. The not being alone, perhaps. It was as terrifying as it was exhilarating: the aloneness had kept him alive for so long that to lose it now felt like a death, like a stepping out into frigid water, only to discover that in fact the water was warm as a bath, and as welcoming. But there was no way he could say all that, so instead he said only, “Thank you.”

Kuryakin arched a brow. “I did not think you knew my name.” 

“I know your name, Illya Nikolaich.” 

Kuryakin just kept looking at him, holding his gaze for a fraction longer than normal. Something passed behind those ice-blue eyes, like a shadow on a lake, but then it was gone. “Come inside,” he said. “Is getting cold. Delicate American balls might snap off.”

Napoleon snorted, and downed the rest of the scotch with a steady hand. “Right behind you, Peril.” 

“Such a cowboy,” Kuryakin sighed.


End file.
